Why Your Portfolio Doesn't Matter (And What Does) // Master Filmmaker
Eric Deeran argues video agencies waste time polishing portfolios when B2B clients only care about revenue. Focus instead on case studies showing measurable results, a clear offer, and systems that generate leads and convert calls into clients.
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What's going on, guys? In this video, we're going to be talking about why your portfolio actually doesn't matter as much as you think it does and what you need to do instead to get more clients. If you don't know me, my name is Eric Darren. I run Master Filmmaker, and to date we've helped over 421 clients one to one. That's just in our one to one stuff, actually get more clients, build their business and build something that they love. And so in this video, we're going to be talking a little bit more about why your portfolio doesn't really matter and what you need to be doing instead. Now, the main reason that people don't care about your portfolio when you're trying to go after more client work is because clients like the clients our clients are trying to get are businesses. They're businesses that want content. They're businesses that need content to grow. They want to make an ROI or return on investment on the content that you're creating for them, right? So when it comes to portfolios, portfolios are really good. When you're a DP or a freelancer, you're an editor, you're a gig worker, you're somebody who wants to, you know, get more projects that way. Whereas what our clients are doing, they don't want to be a DP on somebody else's set. What they really want is they want to be able to go after a business client, get that client on retainer, and get that person to pay them money on a retaining basis. That's B2B. That's business to business. When you're a freelancer or you're a, you know, someone who does gigs, which there's nothing wrong with, you are freelancer to business, so you're F to B. And so what that means is you're going from freelancer to business owner. And so when you want to go B2B, B2B is all, all about having an offer that solves a problem for the person that you're, you're giving that offer to. And so you're either B2B or B2C. B2B is B2 business or business to business. B2C is business to consumer. And so in this business, when you run a video agency, you're trying to get video agency clients that they're typically other businesses. And the reason that's important is because other businesses want an outcome. And so if all you're doing is talking about your portfolio and how you're the best, you have the Best quality. They're not paying for quality. What they're paying for is they're paying for result. And so they want to know that they're going to actually make money or achieve some sort of result as a result of working with you, right? So typically what most people are doing, like I said, if you're a freelancer, see if my pen will work here and you're going to businesses, then that's fine. Like your portfolio. I'm sorry, not businesses. Let me erase this. You're typically working other. Under other production companies, right? And so for this a portfolio is going to make sense. Excuse me, Portfolio is going to make sense here because you're going after. Because they're hiring you to do one thing. Like if you're an editor here, right? They're hiring you because they want the best editor in the world or they want the best editor. They want to know the quality of your work. If you're a dp, they want to know the quality of your work. If you're going as a video agency, right? Or production company, that's what these guys are doing to their clients. As a side note, let's make a little thing here. Clean this up. So let's say you're a video agency. Video agency, right. And you're going after businesses who need content. They don't care about your portfolio because they're looking for a make money outcome. And so there's like three main things that people pay for, right? So you have money. Like the reason people buy things are because of three main things. So you have money, you have relationships and you have health. Anything you buy can be boiled down to these three things. So you either buy something cause you wanna make more money, you buy something cause you want it to improve your relationship with, or you buy something because you want it to improve your health. And so with relationships here for this, let's just boil this down. Like in the world of video, right, Health may not make sense, but relationships are going to be. When you film wedding videos, right? And so the couple is hiring you because they want to capture their relationship. They're not looking to make money from that. Whereas with money this is going to be businesses. Businesses hire you to create content that makes them more money, directly or indirectly. And if you're not, if you're not tying that in in some way or you know, showing them that you can help them do that, then you're going to be capped at a certain level of income every single month and per project because you're not actually showing Them how they're going to make a return on your content. And then health is not really applicable to the video world. But like this is if you joined a gym, right? If you joined a gym, you want to improve your health. Businesses hire you because they want to make money. And then you'd shoot weddings for people because they want to capture their relationship. Now, the reason all this is important is because, like I said, the portfolio is going to make sense when you are a freelancer or a gig worker going to work for a production company. Whereas the video agency for this, they want to know about your results, so they want to know about case studies. So do you have anybody that you've done work for before and you've created content that helped them get a result? I want to see proof of that. This is what we call social proof. And so it boils down to having good case studies, having a really good offer, and then having a way to get people into that offer, which is going to be lead gen. So let's kind of clean this up a little bit. So if you're a video agency and you want to make more money, you want to get more clients, what you need to be focusing on is getting case studies, having a really good offer that's clear, that shows what you can, can do, and it's a really clear and defined offer. And having really good lead generation. In other words, how do we turn someone from a lead to a call to a client? How do we do that? So you need to have a system. So if you're spending all your time working on the portfolio, you're just simply spending all this time working on the wrong things. And those things are not going to make you more money. And this is why people spend a bunch of time on something that doesn't actually make them any more money. And then they wonder why next year they're in the exact same spot that they're in right now. Because at the end of the day, your business is like a pipe, right? And so let's say your business is a pipe. And so up here is leads, this is calls, this is clients. And clients equal money, right? So if you're, let's say that you're, let's use some colors here. Let's say your pipe is blocked up here and the water can't get through here. It's stuck, right? So it can't get through. Now what you should be focusing on is fixing this problem here, which is getting more leads. But instead if you're focusing on, you know, let me focus on my portfolio over here. Portfolio's not even in the pipe. And so you're focusing all your time on this thing here, and then you're wondering why you have the best work in the world, but it's not actually getting you more clients. It's because you're not actually focusing on the thing that you need to focus on to get more clients, which is leads, calls which turn into clients. It just, you know, this is something that I've. I've had to teach a lot of people and I went through myself, which I understand why it's confusing sometimes, but it's like if you're literally working on the wrong thing, which is this thing over here, and it's not the bottleneck or the constraint of the business, then you're not going to make any more money, your business is not going to grow, and then you're going to be wondering why. You're going to be over here with a pouty face, wondering why your business isn't growing even though you have the best work in the world. So hopefully that makes sense. Guys, I just. This is something I'm passionate about. I had a couple calls the past couple of weeks with people who are just struggling a little bit on, you know, what the main bottleneck is in their business, and I figured this would be helpful. So if you have any questions on this, let me know. And Shameless Plug. If you want to learn more about how we help video business owners like this, there's a link down. Check it out, book a call with our team, and we'll see if we can help.
